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An HIT Moment with … Stuart Long, President, Capsule Tech, Inc.

November 11, 2011 Interviews 2 Comments

An HIT Moment with ... is a quick interview with someone we find interesting. Stuart Long is president of Capsule Tech, Inc. of Andover, MA.

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What’s new in the world of medical device connectivity?

I think the biggest change is that more and more hospitals understand the need for device integration and have moved on to the realization that clinical workflow improvement is a significant factor. This means that when hospitals are evaluating connectivity, that they are not only looking at the technical components, but are really investigating whether the solution fits the way the nurse works. They realize that doing so not only ensures successful adoption, but ensures that the benefits of device integration are
truly realized. 

We’re seeing actual data from our customers indicating their clinical staff gains as much as one-fourth of their time back to bedside caring of their patients. This is significant. I also think this is why you see the role of CMIOs and CNIOs increasing in the industry — understanding the importance that IT plays in the evolution of improved clinical care. They are leading the way at bridging the gap between IT and clinical and ensuring that the technology not only fits technically, but clinically as well.

Why is vendor-neutral device connectivity important?

There are hundreds of devices throughout a hospital. There are dozens of receiving systems that want data from those devices. Without a vendor-neutral solution, hospitals end up with vendor-dependent solutions that only solve connectivity for one device or one system and can significantly drive up the cost of deployment, management, and upkeep. The result of this type of connectivity is multiple points of integration that are nearly impossible for the hospital to manage and that offer no flexibility to add,
change, or upgrade their devices or IT systems. As connectivity evolves, there will be even more points of integration to manage.

Vendor-neutral connectivity is the optimal way for a hospital to ensure that their architecture is as clean as possible, that it minimizes points of integration for easier management, that it helps manage costs, and that it offers the flexibility and scalability to allow hospitals to add and change devices or IT systems as needed.

However, we consider this basic vendor neutral connectivity. Customers want to connect more devices, but they also want a visual status display at the bedside. They want a solution that allows them to validate and send vitals from the bedside in lower acuity areas such as med-surg. They want to expand their solution to do more advanced connectivity, such as reporting and analytics, that could result from the collection and comparison of all collected data. 

Many of our customers understand the burden of managing many third-party applications on a PC not originally intended for this type of use. They tell us with FDA being a priority, “We want you to own it cradle to grave.” This way there’s no ambiguity as to who owns what. The point of demarcation between what is our responsibility and what is the customers is crystal clear.

Our product is a medical grade platform that delivers basic connectivity and enables connectivity across the hospital, fits into workflows, is dedicated to connectivity management, and is field-upgradeable. Customers can realize the benefits of improved patient care, workflow efficiency, and patient safety today and grow without having to overhaul their solution to add features and applications later.

Are we at a point where our ability to collect medical device data exceeds our ability to do anything useful with it?

There is always a need to automate the basic charting process. Manual vital sign collection and charting is simply a waste of nursing time. Even if the only goal for a hospital is to implement the basic connection of devices to systems to automate this charting process and improve patient care at the bedside, this in and of itself justifies the implementation.

However, I think the industry is in the early stages of the next big growth cycle for device connectivity. Clearly the connection to the EMR is still the biggest driver for connectivity today, but there are many applications that have been emerging over the past few years that require not only the discrete device parameters, but also the alarms and waveforms from devices. Some of the emerging drivers are decision support, remote surveillance and monitoring, mobile devices, alarm management, and device-to-device
interoperability.

There are definitely many current and future uses for all this device data. The challenges are in being able to process, format, and ultimately serve up the data to these applications. We are experts at doing this. Providers also need and want to get more useful data to help improve decision making. In fact, there is already much progress on the BI and analytics aspect of healthcare.

Do you have examples of providers that have demonstrably improved patient outcomes by using medical device data integration?

Yes. The key benefits of medical device connectivity are improved workflow efficiency and patient safety. Our customers have documented amazing progress in this area and reported improvements in the amount of time vital signs are now available in the patient’s record.

One customer nearly eliminated the delay of vital signs to the patient record, going from six hours to just seconds. Another customer recognized an annual savings of $265k in reduced waste previously caused by vital sign delays. Another reported a 23% reduction in documentation time post medical device connectivity. Ultimately, this translates to more time in direct care activities and supports improved patient care and satisfaction. This leads us to the results of one customer that reported a 61% Gallup improvement in their nursing satisfaction pertaining to their job.

Patient safety is positively impacted by medical device connectivity as well. Charting errors are reduced and patient data errors are avoided. Accurate vital signs are available in the EMR and accessible to physicians and clinicians, which improves patient care coordination. One of our customers is linking near real-time vital signs with their early warning system and using it as patient surveillance to track deterioration of the patient status and the need for rapid response intervention. They are also using the benefits of device connectivity to monitor the potential for sepsis in lower acuity environments.

Exact metrics on errors and omissions are hard to come by since hospitals are sensitive to report this information. However, we are seeing our high reliability customers more willing to study this metric so they can continuously improve and initiate actions to create a safer environment for all their patients.

What changes do you predict over the next few years that will affect your products?

The largest changes will be related to improvements in clinical workflow and the use of data. This includes the collection and management of alarms and waveforms and the ability to integrate smart pumps. Closely related to all of this is the industry shift from collecting data based on the patient’s location to a workflow, whereby the data is directly linked to a confirmed patient ID.  All of these areas are huge challenges for hospitals. 

We have been working with our customers and our device and information system partners to solve these needs. There are a lot of technical details to sort through to make it happen and a lot of testing that needs to be done end to end. But that work has
started and connectivity will, in my opinion, be rapidly changing in the years to come.



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Currently there are "2 comments" on this Article:

  1. Hi Bob. I didn’t mention the recall because the question wasn’t posed to me as part of the Q&A. And yes, we were under a recall; we have been completely upfront about it from the beginning and even created a page on our website detailing everything related to it. The thing to realize is that Capsule has always held Class II FDA 510k clearance on our solution; this goes above and beyond what is required for an MDDS solution. However, we believe that it is critical to ensuring the highest quality of products and solutions and to ensuring that we can more easily expand connectivity in the future. Yet, this Class II clearance does place us under higher scrutiny with the FDA, and therefore having an issue is not uncommon. It is how you handle it. We voluntarily filed the recall, we quickly responded to our customers, we have implemented a correction in 6 months time and have already filed to close the recall. All of this done to maintain our customer first position, to ensure honesty and full disclosure and to continue delivering the highest quality of products possible. For more information, please do not hesitate to visit the Updates & Alerts page of our site. http://www.capsuletech.com/medical-device-trends-alerts-notices.htm







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